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Full-Text Articles in Business

Labor Market Institutions And The Incidence Of Payroll Taxation, Jinyoung Kim, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh May 2022

Labor Market Institutions And The Incidence Of Payroll Taxation, Jinyoung Kim, Seonghoon Kim, Kanghyock Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

Despite the unambiguous predictions of the canonical model of a competitive labor market, empirical studies of the labor market effects of payroll taxation provide conflicting evidence. We estimate the labor market impacts of payroll taxation in Singapore, the country with the most competitive and flexible labor market among the countries investigated in the literature. By exploiting the sharp reduction in payroll tax rate when workers turn 60, we find that the reduced payroll tax rate in Singapore has a large effect on wages without changes in employment. Our meta-analysis shows consistent evidence that varying degrees of labor market competitiveness across …


Vat Treatment Of The Financial Services: Implications For The Real Economy, Ismail Baydur, Fatih Yilmaz Dec 2021

Vat Treatment Of The Financial Services: Implications For The Real Economy, Ismail Baydur, Fatih Yilmaz

Research Collection School Of Economics

Financial institutions are exempt from the value-added tax (VAT) in most countries. We develop a general equilibrium model with endogenous firm entry and a banking sector to accommodate three key distortions related to exempt treatment: (i) self-supply bias in the banking sector, (ii) under-taxation of payment services, and (iii) input distortions in the business sector and tax cascading. We calibrate our model to the average of Germany, France, and the UK data. Our results show that repealing exempt treatment always increases tax revenues. However, welfare gains occur only at low VAT rates due to the hump-shaped VAT Laffer curve.


Making Money From Cryptocurrency? The Taxman May Call On You, Hern Kuan Liu, Vincent Ooi Nov 2021

Making Money From Cryptocurrency? The Taxman May Call On You, Hern Kuan Liu, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Miners, forgers, hobbyists, traders – different rules apply. Just don’t assume crypto investment is somehow immune to taxation.


A Taxonomy Of Non-Dictatorial Domains, Shurojit Chatterji, Huaxia Zeng Oct 2020

A Taxonomy Of Non-Dictatorial Domains, Shurojit Chatterji, Huaxia Zeng

Research Collection School Of Economics

We provide an exhaustive classification of all preference domains that allow the design of unanimous social choice functions (henceforth, rules) that are non-dictatorial and strategy-proof. This taxonomy is based on a richness assumption and employs a simple property of two-voter rules called invariance. The preference domains that form the classification are semi-single-peaked domains (introduced by Chatterji et al. (2013)) and semi-hybrid domains (introduced here) which are two appropriate weakenings of the single-peaked domains, and which, more importantly, are shown to allow strategy-proof rules to depend on non-peak information of voters’ preferences. As a refinement of the classification, single-peaked domains and …


Tax Considerations For Funds Structuring In Asia, Vincent Ooi Oct 2020

Tax Considerations For Funds Structuring In Asia, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Tax considerations play a major role in the decisions of fund managers of where to base their funds. The highly mobile nature of capital has resulted in tax competition, leading to several host jurisdictions for funds in Asia (Hong Kong, Singapore, Labuan, and the BVI) having very similar tax characteristics in terms of low effective corporate income tax rates; no capital gains taxes; no exit taxes; a single tier of taxation; and generally no withholding taxes. Other ways in which jurisdictions have attempted to distinguish themselves include a strong Double Tax Agreement network, certainty on the taxation of the carried …


What Really Needs To Be Done To Close Tax Haven Loopholes?, Singapore Management University Feb 2020

What Really Needs To Be Done To Close Tax Haven Loopholes?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

While media shaming of corporations which profit-shift to a tax haven is an obvious deterrent of such activity, governments need to change tax laws in order to have a real impact


Spillover Effects Of Clients’ Tax Enforcement On Financial Statement Auditors: Evidence From A Discontinuity Design, Travis K. Chow, Jeffrey Pittman, Muzhi Wang, Le Zhao Nov 2019

Spillover Effects Of Clients’ Tax Enforcement On Financial Statement Auditors: Evidence From A Discontinuity Design, Travis K. Chow, Jeffrey Pittman, Muzhi Wang, Le Zhao

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the impact of clients’ tax enforcement on financial statement auditors. In a regression discontinuity design, we exploit the firm-registration-date-based application of a new rule that assigns firms to two different tax enforcement regimes. Our analysis implies that auditors exert less effort–evident in lower audit fees and shorter audit report lags–when their clients are monitored by the more stringent tax authority. In results supporting that audit quality improves in this situation despite the fall in auditor effort, we report that clients subject to tougher tax enforcement exhibit a lower incidence of accounting restatements and tax-related restatements. Additionally, we find …


The Minimum Wage And Corporate Tax Planning, Xiaoxi Li, Chee Yeow Lim, Yanping Xu Sep 2019

The Minimum Wage And Corporate Tax Planning, Xiaoxi Li, Chee Yeow Lim, Yanping Xu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper investigates the impact of the minimum wage (MW) on corporate tax planning. By exploiting heterogeneity in the MW level across cities and over time in China, we find that increases in the MW are associated with greater tax planning by firms. Our results are robust to the consideration of a sample of contiguous firms in two adjacent cities subject to different MWs, a change specification and a difference-in-differences research design that exploits the enactment of the Labor Contract Law in 2008 as an exogenous shock to the MW. In cross-sectional analyses, we find that the positive impact of …


Tax Uncertainty And Business Activity, Jungho Lee, Jianhuan Xu Jun 2019

Tax Uncertainty And Business Activity, Jungho Lee, Jianhuan Xu

Research Collection School Of Economics

We investigate the extent to which uncertainties about tax policies affect business activities. We develop a statewide tax-uncertainty measure (TU measure) and show that it captures state corporate tax uncertainty. By comparing adjacent counties across state borders, we show that increasing tax uncertainty by one standard deviation (a 30% increase in the TU measure) leads to a 0.17% point per-year decrease in the growth rate of establishments over two years. The result holds after conducting a variety of robustness checks and is not likely to be driven by general state-policy uncertainties.


Corporate Tax Aggressiveness And Insider Trading, Sung Gon Chung, Beng Wee Goh, Kiat Bee Jimmy Lee, Terry Shevlin Mar 2019

Corporate Tax Aggressiveness And Insider Trading, Sung Gon Chung, Beng Wee Goh, Kiat Bee Jimmy Lee, Terry Shevlin

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the association between corporate tax aggressiveness and theprofitability of insider trading under the assumption that insider tradingprofits reflect managerial opportunism. We document that insider purchaseprofitability, but not sales profitability, is significantly higher on average inmore tax aggressive firms. We also find that the positive association between taxaggressiveness and insider purchase profitability is attenuated for firms withmore effective monitoring and is accentuated for firms with a more opaqueinformation environment.In addition, we provide empirical evidence that tax aggressiveness issignificantly associated with greater insider sales volume in the fiscal yearprior to a stock price crash. Finally, we find that the association …


How Tax Rates Can Achieve Greater Savings For Married Couples, Teng Aun Khoo, Kai Guan Clement Tan Feb 2019

How Tax Rates Can Achieve Greater Savings For Married Couples, Teng Aun Khoo, Kai Guan Clement Tan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In the second of our two-part guide, Khoo Teng Aun and Clement Tan Kai Guan look at how to use tax rates to achieve greater savings for married couples.


Proposed Reforms To Singapore Goods And Services Taxation In The Digital Economy, Hern Kuan Liu, Vincent Ooi Feb 2019

Proposed Reforms To Singapore Goods And Services Taxation In The Digital Economy, Hern Kuan Liu, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

With the rapid development of the digital economy and the increasing importance of GST as a source of tax revenue, the Singapore Government has proposed several reforms to tighten the collection of tax revenue and tap its tax base more efficiently. The reforms focus on activating the currently dormant “reverse charge” mechanism to collect GST on supplies of services “imported” by businesses; creating an “overseas vendor registration regime” to catch digital products “imported” by individuals; and clarifying the “place of supply” requirement for supplies of digital products. This article considers the reforms from the perspective of a foreign business that …


The Economics Of Managerial Taxes And Corporate Risk-Taking, Chris Armstrong, Stephen Glaeser, Sterling Huang, Daniel Taylor Jan 2019

The Economics Of Managerial Taxes And Corporate Risk-Taking, Chris Armstrong, Stephen Glaeser, Sterling Huang, Daniel Taylor

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the relation between managers’ personal income tax rates and their corporate investment decisions. Using plausibly exogenous variation in federal and state tax rates, we find a positive relation between managers’ personal tax rates and their corporate risk-taking. Moreover—and consistent with our theoretical predictions—we find that this relation is stronger among firms with investment opportunities that have a relatively high rate of return per unit of risk, and stronger among CEOs who have a relatively low marginal disutility of risk. Importantly, our results are unique to senior managers’ tax rates––we do not find similar relations for middle-income tax rates. …


Societal Trust And Corporate Tax Avoidance, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald Lobo Dec 2018

Societal Trust And Corporate Tax Avoidance, Kiridaran Kanagaretnam, Jimmy Lee, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald Lobo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using aninternational sample of firms from 25 countries and a country-level index for societal trust, we document that societal trust is negatively associated with tax avoidance, even after controlling for other institutional determinants, such as home country legal institutions and tax system characteristics.We explore the effects of two country-level institutional characteristics—strength of lega linstitutions and capital market pressure—on the relation between societal trust and tax avoidance. We find that the relation between trust and tax avoidance is less pronounced when legal institutions in a country are stronger and is more pronounced when capital market pressure is stronger. Finally, we examine …


Rationale Behind State Aid Control Over Tax Incentives, Diheng Xu Jun 2018

Rationale Behind State Aid Control Over Tax Incentives, Diheng Xu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

EU State aid draws international attention recent years due to its application to fiscal measures granted by Member States to multinational enterprises. It has triggered discussions on the reasonableness of applying State aid law to tax measures. This article aims to explore the fundamental rationale behind EU State aid and its application to tax incentives. By going back to basics, this article contributes to a clearer picture on reasons for the State aid control over tax incentives. Governments tend to use fiscal State aid measures to achieve policy goals and tax incentives could realize the goals since they do bring …


Stamp Duty Issues In Singapore Corporate Practice, Vincent Ooi Apr 2018

Stamp Duty Issues In Singapore Corporate Practice, Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

A new dimension to the determination and computation of stamp duties payable in corporate transactions has been introduced due to the Additional Conveyance Duties (“ACD”) Regime. For companies with significant residential property holdings, liability to pay ACD potentially extends to all transactions involving the issuance, transfer or cancellation of equity interests. This paper considers the impact of ACD on several common corporate transactions in Singapore, addressing the risks practitioners may face in being blindsided by potential tax liabilities. Besides highlighting potential pitfalls, this paper explores the use of advance rulings and preferring debt financing over equity financing for tax optimisation.


Corporate In-House Human Capital Investment In Tax Planning, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Travis K. Chow, Yanju Liu Jan 2018

Corporate In-House Human Capital Investment In Tax Planning, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng, Travis K. Chow, Yanju Liu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In-house human capital tax investment is a significant input to a firm’s tax decisions. Yet,due to the lack of data, there is little empirical evidence on how corporate in-house taxdepartments are associated with tax planning and compliance outcomes. Using handcollected data on corporate tax employees in S&P1500 firms over the period 2009-2014, wefind that in-house tax planning investments lead to greater tax avoidance, in-house taxcompliance investments lead to lower tax risk, while general tax investments achieve bothgoals. We obtain the same inferences when controlling for endogeneity or using changespecifications. We also find that the effects of in-house tax investments are …


Local Tax Incentives And Behavior Of Foreign Enterprises: Evidence From A Large Developing Country, Jing Xing, Wei Cui, Xi Qi Jan 2018

Local Tax Incentives And Behavior Of Foreign Enterprises: Evidence From A Large Developing Country, Jing Xing, Wei Cui, Xi Qi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We analyze how profit reporting and investment behavior of foreign enterprises respond to local tax incentives in China, a large developing country. Using firm-level data between 2000 and 2013 from China’s industrial enterprise survey, we first provide strong evidence for tax competition among Chinese cities (especially cities within the same province) over the average effective income tax rate. We then find that, despite stringent capital controls, both reported pre-tax profits and investment of foreign firms respond strongly to local tax incentives, suggesting that subnational tax competition in China is oriented towards both mobile profits and real resources.


Why Do Publicly Listed Firms Evade Taxes: Evidence From China, Travis Chow, Bin Ke, Hongqi Yuan, Yao Zhang May 2017

Why Do Publicly Listed Firms Evade Taxes: Evidence From China, Travis Chow, Bin Ke, Hongqi Yuan, Yao Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Taking advantage of the mandatory disclosure of detected corporate tax evasions in China, we examine why publicly listed firms evade taxes. Different from most prior studies that focus on corporate income tax avoidance, we consider tax evasions related to both income taxes and non-income taxes. We also use a bivariate probit model to account for the partial observability of corporate tax evasion. Many of our regression results using the bivariate probit model are different from the results using the reduced form probit model that ignores the partial observability of tax evasion. Many of our results are also different from those …


Related Parties As Used In Transfer Pricing, Jow Lee Ying, Yong Sing Yuan Mar 2017

Related Parties As Used In Transfer Pricing, Jow Lee Ying, Yong Sing Yuan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

The paper examines the scope of related party transactions falling under the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines (TPG) and the transfer pricing regimes of selected tax jurisdictions. The OECD TPG does not deal with the concept of associated enterprises as used in Article 9 of the OECD Multilateral Tax Convention (MTC), while Article 9 of the OECD MTC does not define the terms used to describe associated enterprises. This gives rise to the question of what exactly was intended for under the scope of Article 9 and its consequent applicability. At the same time, many jurisdictions define related party transactions for …


Vat Treatment Of Financial Institutions, Ismail Baydur, Fatih Yilmaz Feb 2017

Vat Treatment Of Financial Institutions, Ismail Baydur, Fatih Yilmaz

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the effects of exempt treatment of financial services under a VATsystem. We develop a general equilibrium model with elastic labor supply, endogenous entry, anda banking sector. The banking sector provides loan services to producers and payment servicesto consumers. Our model display three key distortions under exempt treatment: (i) self-supplybias in the banking sector, (ii) consumption distortions, (iii) input distortions and tax cascading.Then, we calibrate our model to match the salient features of the tax system EU countries. Atax neutral policy regime switch from exempt treatment to full-taxation in loan services improveswelfare about 4%. Shutting down the entry …


Targets Tax Shelter Participation And Takeover Premiums, Travis Chow, Kenneth J. Klassen, Yanju Liu Dec 2016

Targets Tax Shelter Participation And Takeover Premiums, Travis Chow, Kenneth J. Klassen, Yanju Liu

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper examines the effect of targets' participation in tax shelters on takeover premiums in mergers and acquisitions. Using a novel data set in which targets disclose that they have not participated in tax shelters, we find that targets that make this statement in their merger filings are associated with 4.6 percent higher takeover premiums, on average. These findings suggest that acquirers are concerned about the potential future liabilities when targets have engaged in tax sheltering. Consistent with this interpretation, the results also indicate that the positive association between targets' nonsheltering disclosure and acquisition premiums is stronger for less tax-aggressive …


Mismatches In Tax Outcomes In The Light Of Beps Actions 2 And 5, Lukas Mechtler, Cindy Siu Ching Wong Oct 2016

Mismatches In Tax Outcomes In The Light Of Beps Actions 2 And 5, Lukas Mechtler, Cindy Siu Ching Wong

Research Collection School Of Economics

No abstract provided.


Six Tax Reforms For 2016, Yee Loong Sum Feb 2016

Six Tax Reforms For 2016, Yee Loong Sum

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Offers some fresh ideas on how to make Singapore more business-friendly and socially aware.


Splitting Specified Foreign Sourced Income Between Tax Exempt And Taxable Portions: An Optimal Solution (Part 3 Of 3), Teng Aun Khoo, Clement Kai Guan Tan Mar 2015

Splitting Specified Foreign Sourced Income Between Tax Exempt And Taxable Portions: An Optimal Solution (Part 3 Of 3), Teng Aun Khoo, Clement Kai Guan Tan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

No abstract provided.


Isca Pre-Budget Roundtable 2015: Pace Of Restructuring, Sze Yee Chan, Clarence Goh, Perrine Oh Feb 2015

Isca Pre-Budget Roundtable 2015: Pace Of Restructuring, Sze Yee Chan, Clarence Goh, Perrine Oh

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Held for the sixth consecutive year on 13 January 2015, the ISCA Pre-Budget Roundtable 2015 served as an invaluable platform for gathering the views and insights of business leaders on both Budget 2014 and the upcoming Budget 2015. As Singapore celebrates SG50 this year, it is an opportune time not only to reflect upon our past achievements but also to look forward to the future with confidence.


Foreign Source Income Tax Exemption And Pooling System: Which Works Better? (Part 2 Of 3), Clement Kai Guan Tan, Teng Aun Khoo Feb 2015

Foreign Source Income Tax Exemption And Pooling System: Which Works Better? (Part 2 Of 3), Clement Kai Guan Tan, Teng Aun Khoo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

When is it better to claim Foreign Source Income under the Pooling System rather than on the Foreign Source Income Exemption


Foreign Tax Credit Pooling System: Is It Always Better? (Part 1 Of 3), Teng Aun Khoo, Clement Kai Guan Tan Jan 2015

Foreign Tax Credit Pooling System: Is It Always Better? (Part 1 Of 3), Teng Aun Khoo, Clement Kai Guan Tan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Presently, there are two systems under which the FTC can be granted subject to satisfying certain conditions 1. FTC source-by-source and country-by-country system (SCS), and 2. FTC pooling system (PS) Under the SCS of computing the FTC, the excess of FTP over the STP on one type of FI (say dividend income) from a foreign country cannot be used to setoff against the excess of STP over the FTP on any other FI. Under the PS, any excess of Foreign Tax Paid (FTP) over the Singapore Tax Payable (STP) on one type of Foreign Income from a foreign country can …


Where There’S A Will: Can Highlighting Future Youth-Targeted Marketing Increase Support For Soda Taxes?, Sungjong Roh, Jonathon P. Schuldt Dec 2014

Where There’S A Will: Can Highlighting Future Youth-Targeted Marketing Increase Support For Soda Taxes?, Sungjong Roh, Jonathon P. Schuldt

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Objective: Amid concern about high rates of obesity and related diseases, the marketing of nutritionally poor foods to young people by the food industry has come under heavy criticism by public health advocates, who cite decades of youth-targeted marketing in arguing for reforms. In light of recent evidence that the same event evokes stronger emotional reactions when it occurs in the future versus the past, highlighting youth-targeted marketing that has yet to occur may evoke stronger reactions to such practices, and perhaps, greater support for related health policy initiatives. Method: In a between-subjects experiment, Web participants (N = 285) read …


The Inclusion Of General Counsel In Top Management And Tax Avoidance, Beng Wee Goh, Jimmy Lee, Jeffrey Ng Dec 2014

The Inclusion Of General Counsel In Top Management And Tax Avoidance, Beng Wee Goh, Jimmy Lee, Jeffrey Ng

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine whether the inclusion of general counsel in top management is associated with a firm’s tax avoidance. We find that firms with general counsel as part of the top management team have lower GAAP effective tax rate, more uncertain tax positions, a higher likelihood of engaging in tax shelter activities, and more tax haven countries in which the firm reports a significant subsidiary, relative to firms without a general counsel in top management. In addition, we find that among firms with general counsel in top management, tax avoidance is greater when (1) the general counsel has tax-related expertise, (2) …